Cuphead is now out. CUPHEAD!

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Our cup runneth over, then it runneth away to shooteth enemies. The mighty Cuphead [official site], a shooty platformer with smooth jazz and a gorgeous hand-animated style using techniques of 1930s cartoons, is now out. After several years of shouting CUPHEAD at each other, we can finally play. Don’t mistake its fun style for an easy game, mind, as Cuphead will drink you up and spit you back out if you’re not careful.

God, CUPHEAD!

Just look at ’em!

Cuphead is a run ‘n’ gun platformer about cup-headed fellas who owe the devil a terrible debt and must repay him by, ultimately, running and jumping and shooting. It does support two-player local co-op, for those who have a cupchum near.

When we first saw Cuphead, it was focused on those delightful boss battles as developers Studio MDHR were only a three-person team. But when it became clear many players wanted more (mate, I’d be happy with the bosses), two of MDHR quit their jobs, remortgaged their houses, and started expanding the team. Now there are run-o-jumpy levels with enemies aplenty between those boss battles.

Cuphead is out now for £14.99/€19.99/$19.99 Steam, GOG, and the Windows 10 store.

I’m basically no good with platform games and have too much to do (including playing other games) to have the patience for more difficult games of any kind, really. A shame, because this really looks charming.

Funny, I found trying to A+ everything on Super Meat Boy revealed almost a puzzle game at its core. Mostly down to the extremely tight level design. Whereas Cuphead seems a good bit looser. I don’t know if it’s because it really is looser or if it’s because the levels are longer. Obviously playing the same short level 50+ times will reveal its subtleties much better than playing a longer level 5 times.

It appears fairly Contra / Metal Slug -esque to me. Honestly, I’m so into the aesthetic, that I’d buy it if it was a horrible game. :D Luckily that doesn’t appear to be the case. The unfortunate part is that I’m at work, and won’t be able to play it for another six hours or so…

Gorgeous game and I don’t want to play it. Everything about it from videos I’ve seen looks like form over function. Hitboxes are ultra vague, colors clash so you can’t tell hazards from background, and on top of that it actively sets out to fuck you up. It just looks like a frustrating mess and I’ll happily wait and just watch the inevitable future speedruns instead.

Whilst I have sadly not played it, I wish cheat codes were still a thing. I spent happy hours playing through swiv, silkworm, x-out and others with infinite lives on. Always felt satisfied as it was a nice ride to see the whole game – no way I would finish swiv otherwise!